4
BAMOS
Jun 2020
President’s report
Angela Maharaj, June 2020
The 23rd March has been a memorable date for me for many
years—first as World Meteorological Day, then as my nephew
and daughter’s birthdays, and from 2020, as the day when
national lock-down commenced and our daily lives changed
so significantly. I expect this lock-down experience will be
formative for most of us; certainly because of the significance
of the date for my family, I know I will be reflecting on this
experience on the 23rd March for many years to come. It isn’t
yet clear what lasting impressions we will be left with when
we come out at the other end. Whatever those turn out to be, I
hope AMOS can play a positive role in helping our community
through this. For now, our thoughts are with members who
have lost family, friends and colleagues to this pandemic and
those who are facing other challenges due to the lock-down
measures.
AMOS has been active through the shutdown period. We
have made submissions to five inquiries: the EPBC Act, NSW
Bushfire, SA Bushfire, Royal Commission on National Natural
Disaster Arrangements, and the Senate Inquiry: Lessons to be
learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season 2019–20.
We are planning online and virtual events and we continue to
work through our regular duties such as running prizes and
chipping away at our long term strategies. We have assessed
the implications of COVID‐19 for the society and reported this
to Science and Technology Australia (STA) of which AMOS is
a member. We were fortunate that our biggest annual event
occurred (very successfully) a mere few weeks before national
lock-downs commenced and anticipate that the risks facing
our society are more likely to be in the aftermath of the lockdown
period. I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate
the member support measures agreed to by National Council
which I reported in a newsletter in mid‐May:
• National Council has decided that membership dues will
not be raised for 2021.
• Any member who is suffering hardship with respect to
membership renewal for 2021 towards the end of the
year is invited to directly contact AMOS at admin@amos.
org.au to discuss support.
• AMOS will freely advertise any Australian job postings
(casual or longer term) targeted at students or early career
(e.g., junior post‐docs) level appropriate to the society’s
professions. Other positions may also be advertised freely
and will be determined on a case by case basis. Contact
AMOS directly.
• In the absence of international and interstate travel, we
would love to find ways to showcase the work of PhD
students completing this year and ECRs whose projects
are wrapping up or are actively seeking work. We can
facilitate this through webinars, BAMOS articles, AMOS
newsletters and social media channels. Please nominate
yourself or your student/post-doc to AMOS.
• We are planning webinars and evaluating various formats
for the AMOS 2021 conference which will be “held” in
Melbourne.
• We are seeking to provide links and resources on the
AMOS website where we can genuinely add value to
existing support resources. If you have any ideas, please
contact AMOS directly.
In other news, I am pleased to announce Dr. Josephine Brown
from the University of Melbourne as chair of the Climate
Variability expert group and Dr. Jatin Kala from Murdoch
University as chair of the Land Surface Processes expert group.
Jo replaces Jaci Brown from CSIRO and Jatin replaces Jason
Evans from UNSW. The AMOS Expert Groups are key to providing
advice and helping to produce authoritative AMOS statements
and submissions. Congratulations to the new chairs, Jo and
Jatin and our deepest gratitude to the outgoing chairs Jaci
and Jason, for their outstanding contributions to AMOS. All our
expert groups are looking for new members so please consider
whether your expertise suits one of our groups and approach
the appropriate expert group chair to nominate yourself.
You may have also noticed that AMOS has been more active
on social media. Our History Special Interest Group has been
working on generating posts on meteorological and maritime
history. Many thanks to our History SIG for this and we will
work on delivering more and a greater variety of posts with rich
content. A gentle reminder that we have an enthusiast member
category that would suit anyone who loves weather and history
but is not a professional in an AMOS field. Enthusiast members
will have BAMOS land in their inbox four times a year, can
access events open to members and may wish to get involved
in our History SIG. The perfect remedy to help keep family and
friends suitably occupied as we continue to try to minimise our
COVID‐19 exposure and avoid a second wave.